My friends left today, heading home to Oxford via Stirling & Lindisfarne (they love history). We had a great visit – their first and last days here were sunny (!) and no rain the entire time (!!!). We went to tourist sites I’d seen before, as well as some I hadn’t. The most remarkable of those was Maes Howe.
I had walked around it before, but never gone in (that’s actually been the theme of more than one of my holidays in the past: Saw It, Didn’t Go In). But this time, I did go in. It is accessible by tour only – a tour guide drives your group to the site, a hillock in the middle of a field; then unlocks a tunnel that you hunch your way through; and gives a 40-minute talk on the amazing chamber inside. Cathy & Mike say it was the highlight of their trip, and I think I have to agree that it is one of the most impressive things I’ve seen since coming to Orkney. It was built 5,000 years ago, in such a way that the sun on the winter solstice shines directly into the chamber (assuming it’s sunny on the 21st of December, a hit-or-miss proposition). It was then sealed and forgotten for a few millenia until Norsemen found and plundered it – there is actual Viking grafitti, some of which is quite vulgar, and one or two which basically translate to “Thor was here“.
But the best part of the tour, bar none, was our tour guide, Sarah. Really, a tour guide can make or break your experience, and she was amazing.
** Note: I think my friends would agree on the worst part of their visit to Orkney: my shower. It was a roller-coaster of a rinsing ride this week; their showers ranged from boiling to frosty, with little opportunity for the user to make changes to the temperature. Not a very nice way to start each day.
No, not that AA. Very funny. When my car wouldn’t start on Sunday, it occurred to me – I have Automotive Assistance! Rather than waiting for a mechanic on Monday, I could call The AA and get the car looked after right away (altho a part of me did think, well, they’ll still have to take it to a mechanic, so odds are it won’t be fixed today anyway).
Called their 0-800 number, and was advised that if this wasn’t a highway accident or breakdown, I had to use their website to report my breakdown. Okay, fine. Keyed everything in and got a reply: Based on your input, it seems that you are reporting from you own home. You are not covered for assistance for any breakdowns within a 1/4 mile of your home address. Really? Well that’s just splendid. I’m sure CAA doesn’t work like that.
Cathy & Mike did offer to help push my car 3/8 of a mile from my house, and we could try again, but that seemed. silly.
I mentioned that last month the bakery and produce shelves in Tesco were bare, no doubt due to Orkney’s ferries’ inability to sail in inclement weather. Which was true. But as you may have noticed, the rest of Britain is in an uproar at the moment, because produce shelves are bare, most obviously, tomatoes, all across the nation. (As well as tomatoes, there is a shortage of leafy vegetables, cucumbers, and beans, just to name a few.)
There’s a variety of reasons why there is a vegetable shortage here: everything from the weather in Europe and North Africa, to the war in Ukraine and its impact on power generation, to reduced farm labour here in the UK, to . . . . Brexit. That’s the biggie. As a result, major grocers are limiting customers’ purchases, and the prices of many items have shot up.
Late last week the less-than-admired Environment Minister came up with a solution for Brits: eat turnips instead of tomatoes. As you can imagine, this did not go down well with the general populace, and some of the backlash has been quite funny. I come from a turnip-loving family (Blackadder fans will consider that an intriguing statement), but even I see what a stupid comment that was.
And, funnily enough, as of this morning, English grocery stores are now reporting a shortage of turnips. Oh dear.
Years ago, LL and I decided to do a road trip around southwestern Ontario. I was going to sell my Mini Cooper, and we thought that before it went, we’d load the dogs and some luggage into the car and spend three days tooling around Woodstock, Ingersoll, and Port Dover (it was more fun that that might sound). We headed out in the morning: I was driving, Lori had the map/GPS, and a Standard Doodle and an Old English Sheepdog were settled in the boot. We had a lovely lunch on a patio in Woodstock, and then I reached for my wallet. (LL knows where this is going). No wallet. No wallet, no drivers license, no credit cards. Oops. For the next three days, Lori did all the driving, and paid all the bills. It really was an accident, honest.
Broch of Gurness
My friends arrived yesterday afternoon. After having driven 800 miles in two days – and Mike only just got his UK licence after months of no driving and Cathy is still waiting on hers (all to do with the complexities of US/UK driving laws) – he was going to have to get back behind the wheel, as my car still wouldn’t start. I assured him it would only be for the afternoon, as the mechanics are very prompt here on Orkney. We drove (and by ‘we drove’ I mean ‘he drove’ to the Broch of Gurness where we wandered around, then drove across the island to see the Standing Stones of Stenness as the sun set. Then off to Tesco to pick up dinner and supplies for the week.
Got out of the car at Tesco – where was my debit card? I searched every pocket of my jacket, and down the sides of the seat, but no card. So Mike had to pay for my groceries. And, as there was no card lying around my house, I’ve had to cancel it and order a new one (5 days to arrive), and now Mike is paying for everything this week. I think it fell out of my hip pocket when I took my phone out to take some pictures at the Broch – it was an accident. Oh, and the mechanic can’t get to my car today. So Mike has to keep driving us around Orkney (he will also be driving 800 miles home later in the week).
What I have here is a life-long (well, six year old) system of testing and taking advantage of my friends’ good nature as a way of validating their love for me. As Freud said, there are no accidents.
Friends from Oxford (originally from London Ontario – go South Lions) are coming for a few days. I’ve got a list of things to see and do, starting with the Cathedral this afternoon, followed by a walk with the dogs at the Broch of Gurness (they like history – that is, Cathy & Mike do. The dogs are indifferent.). Woke up to sunshine and a great forecast – all systems go.
Well, except my car won’t start. I assume it’s the cold weather – hoping as the day progresses the engine will warm up and the problem will be resolved. So I can’t get groceries before they arrive. Oh well, we’ll all go together when they get here.
Just checked the Cathedral – turns out it only opens on Sunday afternoons in the summer (for the tourists). Okay, well Tesco can replace touring the church. Groceries over God.
I had warned them that in inclement weather the ferries can be hit or miss. But that’s okay – as I said, it’s a beautiful day here. Ah, no, just got an email from them – the ferry has been cancelled due to mechanical issues. Great. But wait, they’ve changed direction and will make it just in time to the ferry out of John O’Groats. Whew – crisis averted.
Last month I talked about the fact that I was becoming housebound and was determined to change that. Then I got COVID, setting me back into settling down. This inertia wasn’t just laziness, although that’s what I said at the time. It was worse than that. I won’t say I was depressed, because that’s not fair to people truly dealing with medical depression – it was more like a lethargy, a lack of interest and energy. I had stopped exploring different parts of Orkney, I wasn’t replying to friends’ emails, I wasn’t going out for lunch or dinner, I was just staying in all day, watching movies. You know that flower arranging evening that I enjoyed so much? I came this close to calling my friend and saying I couldn’t come, just ‘cause I couldn’t be bothered. (Glad I didn’t.)
St Magnus at Sunrise
I didn’t like how I was feeling, so I did what I always do when I need a boost – I looked for external stimuli to get me back up and out. I know, I know, we should find our motivation from within. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that’s not so for me; I’ve said it before: sometimes I just need to watch a video or read a book to get back up-and-at-it. (In fact, this is one of the reasons I’m sure it wasn’t depression – true depression is not resolved with a self-help book.) During the first lockdown, my sister told me about a book she was enjoying, The Productivity Project, by Canadian author Chris Bailey. Some of the takeaways from that book are things I still do today, pretty much every day, which help me stay focused and productive when I need to be. Well, last year, the same sister told me about another book, Atomic Habits, which was all the rage. Excellent, just what I needed. I started listening to the audiobook on my walks with Scout a few weeks ago. There are a lot of good ideas, some of which appeal to me, and some of which just aren’t my cup of tea. But that’s the thing about these books, you don’t have to embrace them fully; you can just pick the one or two or three things that resonate for you.
A couple of the ideas that author James Clear talks about are: habit stacking and improving things by one percent per day. Well, I spent a lot of time thinking about these ideas, and my current daily pattern, and re-listening to chapters of the book, then I decided what changes I was going to make.
And it worked. The changes I’ve made are going to sound so mundane to you, but I can honestly say that in the last three weeks I have been busier, having more fun, and getting more done. For example, instead of having my morning tea before going for a walk, we now head out as soon as I get out of bed (the dog, you can imagine, is delighted). The results of this are: by the time I walk, get home & have tea, and read the news, it’s still before 9 a.m. and I’m raring to get things done, around the house, or out with friends. This is a photo I took on one of these walks of the cathedral just before sunrise – absolutely beautiful. We’ve checked out parts of Orkney I hadn’t seen before – this walk to the Covenanters Memorial (below) was exhilarating. And on Saturday night, I took the bus to Stromness, had an amazing dinner of scallops, lobster, and rhubarb pie (all local) and bussed home (the bus was so I could have wine). Well, so what, you think? How is forcing yourself to go out for dinner a big deal – you do that all the time. Yes, but this time, because I wasn’t driving, on the way home I saw the Northern Lights. Wouldn’t have seen that if I’d been sitting watching Netflix. (I didn’t get a photo through the bus window, they were just a greeny line along the horizon. But still.)
The wall that separates my garden from the sidewalk (pavement) is about 4′ tall. All of my rooms have windows facing toward it (well, not the bathroom, but my bedroom, sitting room, and kitchen do), but because of the shrubs and the hedge, which are anywhere from six to seven feet high, it is quite private. But, that’s all changing.
My landlord has spent hours this week (and I do mean HOURS) cutting away all the hedge that is growing up, along, and above the wall. He had tried to hire someone, but like so many tradespeople here, the gardener was very hard to pin down. So he’s doing it himself. He has spent anywhere from 3 – 8 hours a day for the last six days carving away at the branches and foliage of the ivy and rosa rugosa (I think) – he must be exhausted. I told him to take all the money he’s saved not hiring a gardener and go on a holiday – he deserves it.
This does mean my house has become much more open to passersby. And it really isn’t as pretty as it was. You can see on the left what the wall looked liked before – that foliage went all the way along the wall. And the photo on the right, from the other end, is the denuded version. But it has to be done (and prob should have been done years earlier). That is a true drystane wall – no mortar. It’s made up of two carefully arranged walls with a hollow space in between, and capped with more stones. Plants like these can do a real number on drystane walls; over time the branches will force the stones down. So, sad as I am about losing the pretty green foliage and cosy privacy, I completely understand why he’s cutting it all away.
Just went to the supermarket to get my groceries for the weekend. I wanted some broccoli or cauliflower to make a nice warming gratin, plus some lettuce and cucumber for salads.
Got to the store – opening the car door very carefully with a tight grip on the handle – doors fly off easily in this weather. Walked to the produce section – all the shelves were bare. Duh. Trucks can’t get supplies here because the ferries can’t run in these seas.
Decided on frozen pizza instead – not quite the same thing. But still, it’s the things you don’t think about.
This afternoon I hosted a mini tech-workshop for some of the people in my walking group. Over the past couple of months, more than one of them has grumbled about something with their cell phone (excuse me, ‘mobile’) or tablet. They all sounded like easily solvable problems, so I suggested a couple of hours at my place to work through some simple steps around email, downloads, and photos.
I figured we could have tea or coffee after – my sitting room, which is where my desk, laptop, and monitor are holds six people comfortably. I could have picked up some cookies (biscuits) to go with the tea, but I decided to make a couple of things instead. I made Scotch Teas (which are called flapjacks in Scotland) because they’re so easy and my women’s group seemed to enjoy them a few years back. And I wanted to serve something Canadian, so I made Nanaimo bars. It wasn’t easy – ingredients here have different names: semi-sweet baker’s chocolate is called dark cooking chocolate, there is more than one type of icing sugar here, and they don’t have graham crackers. They use crushed digestive biscuits for pie crusts. And any online recipe I found for Nanaimo bars was all in cups and here people use weights, so there was a lot of converting going on.
But that wasn’t the hardest part. The hardest part was that I’m an idiot. (I may have mentioned that before.) I got the crust layer done and in the fridge, and started on the custard layer. The recipe called for using a hand mixer to combine the butter, icing sugar, and custard powder. But I don’t have one. I have a whisk on the end of an immersion mixer. Even as I was putting together, I said, “Don’t do it.” I said it out loud. I’m guessing you don’t really need the photo to demonstrate what happened next. Sigh. Then, and only then, did I remember I have my aunt’s beautiful stand mixer. Twenty minutes later, Nanaimo bars all done and chilling in the fridge, and kitchen clean (well mostly – I may have icing sugar mixed in with my pepper shaker for the next few weeks). And my guests seemed to like them. I have to take their word for it; I don’t like coconut, so I’ve never had Nanaimo bars (still haven’t – sent the guests home with the extras).
The actual Why-does-my-mobile-do-that workshop went very well. Everyone seemed to go away with at least one problem solved – except Barbara – we still have to figure out what’s wrong with her Messenger. Another time.
All in all, a lovely way to spend a blustery afternoon.
